American Express launched Rewards Multiplier, a proprietary portal which grants you bonus Membership Rewards points for your purchases made via the Amex portal in 2020.
Until now, American Express used to offer the following bonuses on most categories, determined by the card you hold:
- American Express Centurion Card: 10X MR points
- American Express Platinum Card: 5X MR points
- American Express Platinum Reserve Card: 3X MR points
- American Express Platinum Travel Card: 3X MR points
- American Express Gold Card: 2X MR points
- American Express Membership Rewards Credit Card: 2X MR points
- American Express SmartEarn Credit Card: 2X MR points
Now, as a part of renewing the Rewards Multiplier programme for July 1 to December 31, 2021, the card issuer has made one notable change to the programme. American Express is now issuing 5X MR points on the Gold Card, which is a massive bump from the 2X MR points of earlier. This means, on the Amex Gold Card, you will now receive 4 bonus MR points per INR 50 spent, instead of the 1 MR point bonus earlier.
Here is the new chart of earning bonus Membership Rewards points on buying via the Rewards Multiplier portal.
Bottomline
If you are one of the cardmembers holding the American Express Gold Card (Charge), you would now be receiving 5x points on your purchases made via the American Express Rewards Multiplier portal. On offer are all sorts of merchants including online commerce and travel and hotel chains. This has most probably been done to up the value proposition of the card in the current times which has not seen any upgrades in a long time.
What do you think of the new move from American Express?
(H/T to Monish)
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The bonus points take their own sweet time coming up. At the end of the statement, they do say the bonus points are for a particular month though. In Feb, mine said Reward Multiplier Nov ‘20 or similar. I haven’t checked it since though. It’s difficult keeping track.
The steps of emptying cart/going to rewards multiplier and logging in is too much work that I don’t do it often – unless it’s a bit more substantial – say 1000 INR atleast (that’s 125 points on the Platinum card). It’s just Amex making sure people who don’t bother much don’t get the points free. A very bad experience though.
@AG, Amex works with an affiliate marketing company to generate these sales. So, typically, the sale needs to get tracked and they need to get paid, before they would convert it into points and pay it back to you. Hence the 120 day cycle.
Agreed. But the entire process itself from the customer’s perspective is very cumbersome. I’d rather quickly purchase products through the apps of respective merchants without bothering for 5X as it’s more convenient to buy directly, unless it’s a large value transaction.
@Anshul, and one has the full right to skip the process and not earn the points. Think of it like this, you are potentially getting something extra for doing these few steps extra. If you get the points, its a bonus. If you don’t, so be it.
Dont agree with you Ajay, amex has multiple promotions all year round which can be saved from the portal once every month/few days. So, why not this one?
I’ve judiciously used the multiplier portal in the past now I dont bother to use it for small tx. for obvious reasons.
Also, I know at least 3 different Amex users who had no idea about a rewards multiplier promotion.
IMO the 5x bonus points should show at the payment page for all partnered website. Making it easier for the customer to choose Amex over others.
@Ekas, like I explained to someone else, this shopping portal works similarly to others across the globe, including Infinia, for instance, where you have to punch in the digits to enable tracking to the exact card you want to post it on. The dependency is on the card digits to figure if it is 2x or 5x, and hence every time this needs to be punched, since the Amazons and the Marriott’s of the world are not sending that data back to them.
I used the 5x one my Gold card to buy an Amazon gift voucher… the bonus points got credit in 2 days
I’d like to see Plat at 7X bonus + upper limit on total monthly rewards.
Besides, is it me or is everyone finding this method of logging in every time via rewards page way too cumbersome?
Also, can someone confirm if they have received the multiplier bonuses?
Im facing an issue where the rewards list it doesn’t mention the bonus earned right away. (Unlike in the international transaction where it shows asap.)
Ive taken this up with AMEX, they said it will appear after 120 days. But, I haven’t seen any notification for extra rewards.
Never received bonus points for Amex transactions till now. 150 business days is too long for anyone to wait.